At the age of seven, on returning from my first and only Saturday morning football practice, I solemnly asked my mum to run me a bubble bath, which I sunk into and declared the morning “a waste of my time”. Beyond behaving like a single mum in a chocolate advert, that morning had long-term repercussions. I had scored an own goal. I got weird-shaped bruises on my legs. My first taste of the beautiful game had been an ugly, degrading affair. The shin-pads went under the stairs, the boots were sold and I cracked on with the Chamber of Secrets.
It is a narrative familiar to many young men. In the face of being consistently picked last, I continued to not only ignore football but began a campaign of derision against its entire culture. I spent years honing my schtick, which was essentially based around the perceived inanity of spending every week watching slight variations on the same routine. “There is a ball,” I would say. “They try and kick it in a big net.” I know. I was hilarious.
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But it was my first week at university that was the initial wake-up call. Suddenly forced to meet so many new people, it became apparent that despite the huge numbers of international students, I was the one who was truly inarticulate. There was a language, shared over web-streams and Foster’s, that I wasn’t privy to – a common tongue of rivalry, allegiance and collective memory. I discovered that rather than making me look more interesting, nobody was particularly impressed or entertained that I didn’t like football. No one ever had been.
So at the start of this season, now graduated and with an endless tract of unemployment ahead of me, I decided to start liking and watching football. I’m overwhelmed by quite how successful this attempt has been. Something that was once the avocation of people too boring to like anything interesting has become the only thing I can talk when I’m fucked. I was Cat Stevens, now I am Yusuf Islam. The metamorphosis is complete.
This love affair is in its infancy (last week I had to Google the word rabona) and I can’t claim these few months have offered me any expertise. But approaching football – and specifically the Premier League – after all this time, with no affiliations or expectations, have given me a bird’s-eye view of its bizarre truths and practices. This is what I have learned:
Football Fans Are Not Idiots
One of the standbys of my pre-Prem attitude was to pick on the stupidity of football fans. Much of this was based around the theory that there was no logic to supporting Everton, and hating Liverpool. You are dividing your loyalties over indiscriminate territories. Worse, if I met a Manchester United fan from Leamington Spa I would question what possible affiliation they had to a city a hundred miles up the M6. We’ve discussed already how I was a bit of a twat.
Now I see that compared to nationalism, football support makes a lot of sense. Rather than pledging allegiance to land mass because they happened to be born there, football fans operate a system of results based micro-patriotism. They consider a team’s ethos, its personality, its tactical mechanisms. They place their loyalty and it is tangibly tested week on week. Their opinions are the product of years spent dedicating time and energy to the love of a craft. It is a more active passion than any religion and a louder devotion than any relationship. They are not idiots: they are pilgrims and intellects. Ones who keep faith even when ;Darron Gibson starts warming up on the touchline.
Managers are the Main Characters
From what I can work out there are two main stock types of manager. Firstly there is the weathered, ex-playing Brit: all growls and jowls, lacking in flair but fairly decent blokes. Highlights of this school include Sean Dyche, a man with so much grit he apparently gargles it, or Sam Allardyce, who looks like the main character in a 1970s sitcom that is now too racist to be on TV. The other group are the European and Latin American tacticians and engineers: Pochettino, Pellegrini, Mourinho. They are all expensive suits and wisdoms muttered through broken English, perched on the touchline of a foreign land, muting their expressions of anger or joy with a steady continental reserve.
Both groups carry on their shoulders the weight of a multi-million pound industry, and the highly-strung emotions of thousands of hungry hearts. They strike me as a strange mixture of power and vulnerability: alpha-males, constantly aware their position in the pack is under threat if they show any sign of weakness. Seated on thrones of ice, praying things don’t heat up.
There Is Sadness in Its Eyes
Another thing that put me off football was my understanding that it was synonymous with pub brawls and old John Smiths-drinking men randomly shouting “cunt” at their televisions. Obviously the thuggish side is present, and everything I hear about the Scottish league makes it sound like a straight-to-video Mad Max sequel, but my experience has indicated that there is actually a universal sadness at play. Pursuing the title is like trying to hold water – both futile but essential at the same time.
They have to keep running but every time they get there the clock resets and the goal posts are moved (not literally, obviously: that wouldn’t work). Ultimately the players are all facing the same opponent: time. Take Rickie Lambert, a man who has climbed the English leagues since 1999, finally making it to the top and his dream move to his childhood team… only to spend most of his weekends sitting on the bench, waiting to be brought on in the 89th minute. I can’t decide if they are heroes, or just greyhounds with Instagram accounts.
Referees Are Way Out of Their Depth
Referees have the air of a dad overseeing their teenage son’s birthday party the first year the guests are taller than he is: on paper he is still in charge, but the basic physics of his situation mean he can only ever hope to look like a community support officer. In fact, and I’m not sure why, I was quite surprised when I found out they were paid. They buzz around with their little cards, vainly pretending they have the faintest hope of catching every exchange, across 100 metres of grass, between 22 men running faster than horses. When the bodies do hit the floor every face then turns to them, arms raised, yelping in protest; despite the fact that in every game I’ve watched so far the ref has never listened to a whining full back and said, “Oh, his arm wasn’t up when he jumped? Sorry, I saw it wrong, carry on.” Instead, they are forced to make speculative decisions that directly affect the lives of hundreds of different millionaires simultaneously on an international stage, and then pretend they aren’t fazed. They are probably the most important person on the pitch, but I can’t help but feel they are the least in control.
It Doesn’t Matter That England Are Rubbish
Before “The Awakening”, the one time I couldn’t help but avoid football was when the World Cup came around. It stopped being a private club and instead became a national obsession, with flags unfurling from windows, Tesco doing deals on Pringles and Ant and Dec releasing a single. Yet it did nothing to stoke my interest. Every four years I would watch as the cast of Dad’s Army broke everybody’s hearts and then tried not to make eye contact with photographers as they trundled back onto a huge coach with their iPod headphones in.
Now I realise they probably didn’t care, and they were just waiting to get back to their way more entertaining day jobs. The prestige of English football knows no fixed nationality. The Premier League features all of your favourite characters from the World Cup, only now there are crossovers from universes, with all the main ones teaming up to form super teams against each other. It’s like an Avengers movie being released every weekend, only without Robert Downey Jr. making smarmy remarks every time something explodes.
It Is Funnier Than Anything Else On TV
The Premier League offers incredibly fertile ground for humour. It is a peculiar universe wherein glossy corporate giants have attempted to claim something that cannot be owned. However many billions the league generates, its beating heart remains bored middle Englanders and athletes with absolutely no TV training. Each week this dynamic makes for magical flashes of incongruity, moments where the discipline and precision of the industry is challenged. Yaya Toure kicking a ball into a five-year-old girl’s face; a bird shitting in Ashley Young’s mouth; everything about Arsenal Fan TV. Human errors among the super-humans. It is a world where David Brent is the CEO of JP Morgan. It is an Apple Store staffed by school children.
It Completely Changes Your Social Experience
The Premier League is the best thing to happen to my social life since MSN. In terms of discussion it provides a framework within which infinite variations can and will occur. Football will always happen but it will always happen differently. You can never run out of conversation. Getting my hair cut has improved exponentially; I no longer have to sever my barber’s olive branch with a curt, “Sorry, I don’t watch football.” Instead we can discuss how Brendan Rodgers deserves more time, or how Alexis Sanchez is the only thing keeping Arsenal afloat, or how much I don’t want him to give me Jamie Vardy’s hair.
Not only that, but the internet provides the platform for this conversation to continue through the week. I can stumble in absolutely off my tits and watch Best Goal Vines until I fall asleep. I check the BBC Sport app more than Facebook. I finally have something to tweet about beyond the Apprentice. It is my new best friend and I love it with all my heart.
Hull Are In It
Hull are in the Premier League. Who knew?
This article was amended to reflect the fact that Manuel Pellegrini and Mauricio Pochettino are Chilean and Argentine respectively, not European. What do you expect; the guy’s a noob.
